E2-Wire

British Prime Minister David Cameron wants a global standard under which petroleum and mining companies will report their payments to governments, calling it a way to curb corruption in resource-rich nations.

Cameron, who is meeting with President Obama at the White House on Monday, called for the Group of Eight leading industrial nations to work on the effort at its June gathering in Ireland.

The prime minister, in a broader Wall Street Journal column backing free trade, said greater “transparency” must accompany more open global markets.

“[W]e must lift the veil of secrecy that too often lets corrupt corporations and officials in some countries run rings around the law. The G8 must move toward a global common standard for resource-extracting companies to report all payments to governments, and in turn for governments to report those revenues,” Cameron writes.

This week will likely bring a changing of the guard at the Energy Department, while Senate Democrats will also try again to advance a stalled nomination to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
 
The full Senate is slated to vote as early as Tuesday on Ernest Moniz, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist who President Obama nominated to run the Energy Department.
 
Moniz, who directs the MIT Energy Initiative, is expected to clear the Senate with bipartisan support. He would replace former Secretary Steven Chu, who left the Energy Department in April after announcing his decision to resign in early February.
 
Less certain is the path forward for Gina McCarthy, Obama’s choice to run the EPA.

The Los Angeles Times unwraps new research that concludes climate change could threaten many species.

“The study’s authors looked at 50,000 common species. They found that more than half the plants and about a third of the animals could lose about 50% of their range by 2080 if the world continues its current course of rising greenhouse gas emissions,” the Times reports. Read more...

Elon Musk, the co-founder of electric car maker Tesla Motors, has quit FWD.us, the political advocacy group co-founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to promote immigration reform.

The Hill’s Jennifer Martinez has the full story of Musk and another tech executive bailing on the group over at our Hillicon Valley blog.

The departure comes after FWD.us enraged environmental and progressive groups by funding political ads that praised lawmakers for backing the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who has been in ill health, will make the trip to the Capitol for the vote.

The White House released a national strategy Friday for balancing energy- and minerals-development and conservation in the Arctic.

The document contains three policy aims — advancing national security interests, responsibly managing the Arctic ecosystem and bolstering international relationships. The White House will develop an implementation plan for the interagency effort in the coming months, a senior administration official said during a media call.

The Arctic issue is politically sensitive for President Obama, who is juggling demands from green groups to address climate change while also encountering pressure from Republicans and the oil-and-gas industry to ramp up drilling.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have surpassed 400 parts-per-million, the government announced Friday.

The Senate is slated to vote next week on Ernest Moniz, President Obama’s nominee to run the Energy Department.

Lawmakers reached an agreement Thursday to proceed with the vote on Moniz, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist who served as undersecretary of Energy in the Clinton administration. It will occur as early as Tuesday.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had been holding up a vote over his concerns about federal management of a program in his state to transform weapons-grade plutonium into fuel.

But the Senate’s “unanimous consent” agreement reached Thursday to allow the vote to proceed means Graham has lifted the procedural block on Moniz. Graham’s office did not comment Friday morning.

The oil industry is pushing back against a federal decision to postpone oil and gas lease auctions on public land in California, The Associated Press reports.

Offshore drillers say there are not enough qualified auditors to comply with an upcoming federal rule requiring third-party reviews of safety systems, the Houston Chronicle writes.

Slate says a cold March increased United States skepticism about climate change.

Republicans on a subpanel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee argued that wind tax credits harm electric power grid reliability, Platts reports.

Prince Charles says that climate change skeptics are turning Earth into a "dying patient," The Guardian reports.

The email from Organizing for Action (OFA) is the latest effort by the pro-Obama group to criticize GOP climate skeptics.